'Well then, tomorrow I'm going to the pathology department to see if they can screen Loretta Leone's' blood. Then I think I'll try to set up an appointment with Dr. Darden.'
'Ah, yes, White Memorial's resident Haitian.
Good idea.'
'If anyone around here would know about the tetrodotoxin myth, he would.'
'Agreed. But do you know if he's ever been near Haiti since he came to the States?'
'Actually, I do,' Eric said. 'There's a clinic in Port-all-Prince that he helped set up. From time to time he takes a resident down with him.'
'In that case, he may well be the man who can put you straight.'
'What do you mean?'
'Well, I'm no expert in this particular area, but I can't believe any drug could do the things you're concerned about. As an Armenian, you have this overdeveloped, genetically inbred sense of responsibility.
That's what makes you such a terrific doctor. But along with it goes your equally inbred Armenian sense of guilt. And right now, that sense is saying that you might have been able to do something to prevent the death of your friend's brother.'
'Well, I've known you for a long time, Eric, and I know that if something wasn't right about that case, you would have spotted it.'
'Maybe so,' Eric said. 'But right now, my inbred Armenian intuition is telling me that I'm onto something.'
'In that case, if you need my help in any way, just ask.'
Subarsky scratched at his beard for a few seconds and then added,
'However, I am willing to wager a pitcher of Heineken that you are orbiting Mars on this one.'
Eric gathered his notes.
'I'll take the bet,' he said, 'and believe me, I hope you win.
Tomorrow I'll hit Darden, the pathology department, and the County Library. I'll keep you posted.'
'Do that,' Subarsky said. 'Just let me know if I or my trusty computer can be of any assistance. And in the meantime, I'll keep my telescope trained on Mars.'
I'm at the hotel. Call if you get in before 10.
If not, call before you go to work in the a.m. Have not been to the — police yet, but plan to do so tomorrow a.m. Hope your library work went well.
Thank you for all you've done.
Love, L.
PS. Refrigerator and cupboards have been restocked. Hope I didn't disturb any great bacteriology experiment by discarding the milk carton.
The note was on Eric's pillow when he arrived home, along with a volume of exquisite photographs entitled Diving Off the Caymans. He flipped through the pages, wondering what it might be like to live in such a place. For so long his life had been on automatic pilot, locked on a single unerring course. Now, there was only uncertainty- uncertainty and a woman.
He set the book aside and spent a few minutes flipping through his notes. He had expected to find Laura waiting in the apartment, and now felt some relief to discover she was not. He had much to work through.
There remained little doubt that the man he had assumed was a derelict, the man he had pronounced dead and sent off to the Gates of Heaven Funeral Home, was Laura's brother. Now there was reason good reason-to believe he should have pressed on with his efforts that day, at least for a while longer.
And although the quality of his patient's life had been a major consideration, Eric knew that his order to stop the resuscitation had been based, at least in part, on his judgment of the value of that life as well. It was a judgment he, like Reed, would have to live with for the rest of his career. it was a bit after ten, so Laura's note left him an out-an excuse to delay sharing his conclusions until morning. But the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to get it over with, to tell her everything and to hope for her understanding. Both Scott and Loretta Leone.had been somehow poisoned, either by a psycho or an inadvertent exposure to some toxin.
Despite Dave Subarsky's doubts, that much seemed clear to him now.
He hoped Laura would see that although he might have made essentially the same mistake as Reed, the deck had been stacked against them both.
He paced the apartment for a time, wondering if other patients in other settines had suffered fates similar to their two cases. Finally, he called the Carlisle. The phone rang half a dozen times before-it was picked up. No o-the spoke.
'Hello?' he said. 'Laura?'
Her sigh was audible.
'Oh, thank God,' she said. 'Eric, I just got a call from some man who threatened me. All he kept saying was 'It's not over. We want the tape.' I screamed at him that I didn't know what he was talking about, but he hung up. I don't know what's going on, but if his aim was to frighten me, he did a very good job 'I'll be right over.'
'You don't have to do that.'
'I want to. I was sort of surprised that you weren't here.'
'I'm sorry. I thought it-might be better if I spent some time alone. I just started feeling as if I was growing to depend on you too much.'
'Laura,' he said.,I'm depending on you too.
Believe me I am. There're some things I need to tell You about.
When I do, I think you'll see that in some ways I have as much at stake in getting to the bottom Of all this as you do. I'd really like-to come over now.'
'What things?'
'Face to face?'
She hesitated.'
'I'll be here,' she said finally.
Laura sat cross-legged on the bed and listened impassively as Eric recounted in detail his actions and thoughts on the morning the derelict was brought in.
'I knew,' she said, when he had finished. — 'That first night we were together, I could see a shadow cross your face every time you talked about that resuscitation.'
'For what it's worth, I'm sorry. We see so many cardiac arrest so many People brought in essentially dead after a coronary-that unless a case is strikingly different from all the others, we don't have even the slightest suspicion that something other than natural causes might be involved.'
'Should you?'
'Well, I guess if we're perfect we should.'
'I didn't mean it like that, and you know it,' she snapped. 'Eric, please. I just want to understand.' He looked at her sheepishly.
'Sorry,' he said. 'Let me think how to explain this… Okay.
There's a concept in diagnostic medicine called index of suspicion. put in simplest terms, means, if YOU don't think of it, index of suspicion and it. The better a physician is, the more you'll never diagnostic Possibilities he considers and sifts through in a case. If you think every case of middle-aged cardiac arrest had a coronary occlusion you'll never diagnose a cocaine overdose in a fifty-five-Year-old corporation president.'
'Believe it or not, the worst Physician can usually do the right thing, or at least not do something harmful, or even. eighty-five percent of the time. It's that other five or ten percent that separates great from run-of-the-mill in our business.'
'most of us think of doctors so differently from that.' know. And the misconceptions-the lofty expectations that the public has of us-are largely our own doing. For we as physicians have fostered the notion that things are or aren't, simply because we say SO. And the public buys into it-or at least a large segment of it does-because people want the security of knowing that there's someone they can Turn to who has all the answers. But please don't think I'm copping out or trying to make excuses for my actions last February.
I'm just trying to help you understand what was ahead. I… I just didn't have a clue or suspicion that something might might be going on.
She ached to hold him, to tell him that she understood. But. she felt unable to get past the life had been in
